Sean Ivor Gabb[1] (born 4 August 1960, Chatham, Kent) is a writer, lecturer and broadcaster who lives in England (Deal, Kent). He was the Director of the Libertarian Alliance, a British free market and civil liberties think tank from 2006 to 2017, and is now a Vice-Chairman of the Ludwig von Mises Centre.[2]

He is currently a Professorial Fellow and Professor of Classical Studies, and Tutor in Law and Politics at the Western Orthodox University, a private unaccredited[13] tertiary education provider based in Dominica.[14][15]

Gabb joined the Libertarian Alliance in December 1979. He became its Director in February 2006, shortly before the death of its founder Chris Tame, whose obituary he wrote for The Independent in April 2006.[16][17]

During that time Gabb spoke on behalf of a number of unpopular "civil liberties" causes such as that of John O'Neill who had limitations on his personal life after being acquited of a rape allegation,[18] against police "moral corruption"[19] and bans on knives[20] smoking in cars.[21] He also spoke out against apologising for the British Empire.[22]

In 2001 Gabb published a "candidlist," described by The Times as a "a list on the Internet of parliamentary candidates graded according to their views on monetary union" (of the European Union).[24][25][26][27][28] The Sunday Telegraph described Gabb an an "anti-euro campaigner."[26]

The website was criticised by both the Labour Party[29] and the pro-European Tory Reform Group who argued it should be banned.[30]

The list worked through classifying a Conservative Parliamentary candidate as "Sceptic", "Don't Know" or "Europhile" on whether they would oppose UK's entry into the Euro currency even if the party leadership supported it and if forced to choose between leaving the European Union and accepting the supremacy of EU law, they would choose to leave the EU.[31]

Gabb is a writer of historical novels,[36] for which he mostly uses the pseudonym "Richard Blake." In 2006, he wrote The Column of Phocas, a thriller set in the 7th century Byzantine Empire. After trying, without success, to find an agent to represent him, he brought this out under his own name and through his own publishing company, The Hampden Press. The book was subsequently rewritten and published in 2008 by Hodder & Stoughton as Conspiracies of Rome, under the name "Richard Blake".[37] Five more novels in the same series have been published by Hodder & Stoughton under the name Richard Blake: The Terror of Constantinople (2009), The Blood of Alexandria (2010), The Sword of Damascus (2011), The Ghosts of Athens (2012), and The Curse of Babylon (2013). In 2015, these were republished in two omnibus editions – Death of Rome Saga, 1-3 and Death of Rome Saga, 4-6. In 2015, Endeavour Press published two further historical novels, Game of Empires and Death in Ravenna. All of these are set in the Byzantine Empire of the 7th century. The novels have been translated into many languages, including Spanish, Italian, Slovak and Greek.[citation needed]

The first six of these novels are told in the first person by an Anglo-Saxon called Aelric. The general convention is that he is writing his memoirs in extreme old age, and all the novels describe the adventures he had in early manhood. These take him to all the cities mentioned in the titles, and give a highly personal view of the interlocking crises that beset the Byzantine Empire between the usurpation of the tyrant Phocas in 602AD and the first siege of Constantinople by the Arabs in the 660s.

The last two are the opening instalments of a new series, set in the same period. These are told in the third person, and feature Roderic of Aquileia, a Gothic boy who is recruited into the Byzantine secret service.

He is opposed to mass-immigration,[51] although he has spoken in at least one debate organised by an Islamic group, in which he called on the audience to embrace freedom of speech and English classical liberalism.[52] He also spoke in a BBC Radio debate, broadcast in December 2015, in favour of the right of Michael Adebolajo, the murderer of Lee Rigby, to sue his jailers for assault.[53]

Gabb's first acknowledged work is a play, in English and Latin verse, The Trial of Jeremy Thorpe (1979).[55] In 2009, he wrote a critique of what he called the "non-poetry" of Carol Anne Duffy.[56] He has written extensively on the Ancient World. Examples include his work on the pronunciation of Greek by the Romans (2002),[57] his biography of Epicurus,[58] and his critique of Karl Polanyi, who claimed that market behaviour was unknown in the Ancient World.[59]